---
title: "Jacques Tits"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Jacques Tits"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-24T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Fields Medal (1978, Margulis)","antisemitism in Soviet mathematics","International Congress of Mathematicians"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


Belgian-French mathematician (1930–2021), a leading figure in group theory
and the theory of buildings, later an Abel Prize laureate (2008), who
delivered the address on Grigory Margulis's work at the 1978 International
Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki after Margulis himself was barred
from traveling to receive his own Fields Medal.

Matters to this vault as the primary, published, independent voice behind
the vault's confirmation of Margulis's exclusion: his closing remarks at the
ceremony — "I cannot but express my deep disappointment... in the absence
of Margulis from this ceremony" — are quoted directly in
[[claim-margulis-1978-fields-medal-travel-block-independently-confirmed-outside-novikov]]
as a source independent of Sergei Novikov's memoir.

## References
- [[claim-margulis-1978-fields-medal-travel-block-independently-confirmed-outside-novikov]]